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“If the biggest economy in the world dumps the whole thing … we all have to worry,” one EU source told Reuters. “We are reaching out at all possible levels … to try to explain why they do not need to leave the Paris agreement.”

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EU officials are scrambling to persuade U.S. President Donald Trump not pull out of the Paris climate accord after his advisers warned of legal problems if Washington stayed in but missed its commitments.

European Union and United States sources said European ministers and EU officials have been lobbying senior White House staff after hearing Trump was leaning heavily towards exiting the global pact because of the legal problems that could arise if Washington did not live up to the climate goals it agreed to.

Trump is due to announce a decision as early as next week along with other energy policy changes, including ordering opening up LNG exports and Arctic drilling, the sources said.

“If the biggest economy in the world dumps the whole thing … we all have to worry,” one EU source told Reuters. “We are reaching out at all possible levels … to try to explain why they do not need to leave the Paris agreement.”

Four U.S. sources briefed on the meetings, who asked not to be named, told Reuters on Tuesday that opponents of the 2015 accord to cap greenhouse gas emissions had won the upper hand in recent White House meetings about whether to pull out or remain in the accord with a reduced commitment.

The sources said White House lawyers had argued in a memo recently that changing the U.S. target, known as the Nationally Determined Contribution, could trigger these complications.

A White House spokeswoman said a decision had not yet been made, and gave no further details. Trump said at a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on Saturday that he would announce a “big decision” on the Paris agreement within two weeks.

EU Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete, who has telephoned White House officials to press them on the climate issue, said “there is room for the new U.S. administration to chart its own path.”

“We all continue to hope the U.S. will find a way to remain within the Paris Agreement,” he told reporters after a meeting with Iran’s environment minister in Tehran on Sunday.

‘ALARM’ Trump vowed during his campaign to “cancel the Paris Climate Agreement” within 100 days of becoming president, part of a broader plan to sweep away Obama-era environmental protections he said were hobbling the economy.

But since being elected, he has been mostly quiet on the issue. Scores of large U.S. companies and several Republican lawmakers have urged him to keep America in the deal as a way to protect American industry interests overseas.

The accord, agreed by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015, seeks to limit planetary warming by cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases from burning fossil fuels.

The United States committed to reducing its emissions by between 26 percent and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 – a level that the Trump administration is unlikely to support.

As recently as last week, advocates for remaining in the agreement – including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner – seemed to have Trump’s ear.

EU lawyers studying the Paris accord, another EU source said, say nothing in the Paris deal prohibits a participant from seeking to reduce its commitments.

That view was upheld by Sue Biniaz, a former State Department legal adviser who left earlier this year and was a key architect behind the Paris agreement.

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“Countries might criticize the decision but it wouldn’t be a violation of the agreement as a legal matter,” she said.

An overwhelming majority of scientists say the burning of fossil fuels like petroleum and coal is a main driver of global climate change, triggering sea level rise, droughts and more frequent violent storms.

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